The Immortals
by Narsia Ny'Dhun
Summary: An old enemy from Demona's past is reawakened into present day New York, pulled into a plot by the Illuminati to have the immortal killed once and for all. Rated for language and blood. Rating to change in the future. Chapter 3 recently updated!
1. Chapter 1

**Part 1- Rude Awakening**

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," the driver said calmly as he pulled open the limo door, holding it open along with an umbrella held slightly away from himself and toward the open door for the passengers to use for shelter from the heavy rain that had been falling since the sun set.

"Not a problem," said the young, clean cut man that stepped out of the limo, "Though I can't help finding it unusual for him to be calling a meeting so suddenly, and in such weather. Marcus isn't playing Frankenstein again, is he?" the man asked with only a hint of sarcasm in his question. The driver only smiled at him and relinquished the umbrella to his passenger who took it in his hand, stepping aside and waiting as the second passenger stepped out of the limozine. This time it was a younger man, barely into his twenties, with somewhat unkempt red hair kept in a ponytail nearly as long as he was tall. The two men standing together almost looked like brothers, the difference in hair color and the unusual looking tattoo over the younger man's eye being the most distinct difference between them.

"Are we the only ones here?" the younger man spoke, more thinking aloud than actually asking as he looked around the mansion grounds, seeing no other vehicles in sight. The driver turned slowly and began walking up the steps leading the door of this rather old and rustic looking place. "Mr. Rothschild has called a meeting, I have no knowledge as to how many have attended." the driver said in answer to the younger man's words and he pulled open one large door revealing a brightly lighted space inside, they could also clearly make out the form of another person standing inside. "Please, come in."

"Answers that question, eh Alex?" the older male said in jest, a smirk crossing over his features as the two men walked under their umbrella until they were inside. Once safely out of the rain the younger man seemed eager to be away from the older man, quickly walking many feet inside ahead of the other man; the older man sighed and ran a hand through his short brown hair, raking a small bit of water out before folding the umbrella and handing it back to the driver. "Please wait here." the driver said just as he was closing the door, disappearing behind it. The sounds of the limozine pulling away could be heard.

The other man inside appeared far older than the two who had just entered. His face was wrinkled, what little remained of his own red hair was shadowed by the strands of grey and the dulled color of his eyes was testament to the weight of age that bore down on him so heavily. He turned around when the limo driver left, keeping his hands inside the pockets of his trench coat, and seemed shocked to see the other two men here as well.

"Matt?" the younger red head said to the older man, approaching him from the side and placing a hand gently on his shoulder. "Matt, is that you?" he asked again, his eyes suddenly bright with the excitement of a reunion with an old friend. The older man smiled, offered a light nod of his head and raised a hand to the shoulder of the opposite side where the younger man's hand was.

"How are you, Fox?" the old man asked kindly; his dulled eyes seemed a little bit brighter than before, but still they were dull and tired. "You still look just like your mother." His hand fell then and that smile faded some as his sights turned the brunette man with the shorter pony tail who still stood near the door with an odd sort of grin plastered on his face.

"It's good to see you in good health, Capt. Bluestone." The brunette man said with sarcasm in his voice and that grin on his face. "I heard about that stroke you had, you really should take better care of yourself." The older red head narrowed his eyes a bit and took a few steps away from his younger friend. The two of the older men stood there for a moment, staring each other down from opposite ends of the room before the older one spoke.

"You're looking well for a man approaching his sixties, Xanatos." Matt said in a voice almost accusing of the seemingly younger man. "I'd say you haven't aged a day, but those drugs aren't perfect, are they?" Matt took a few steps back and turned away from the other man, turned his head toward the younger red head and just shook his head as if disappointed.

"I know." Fox said to Matt as if knowing what that gesture meant. "Some things never change." Fox's head turned slightly toward the man near the door and he spoke again in a hushed tone, "Old habits, like stubborn old men, die hard." then turned back to Matt and added with a grin "No offense." to which Matt added "I hope you mean his fear of death when you say old habits." while turning his head slightly and looking suspiciously at the man by the door out the corner of his eye.

Xanatos finally stepped forward, the clicking of his shoes on the marble floor echoed in the uncomfortable silence. "Isn't fear supposed to be a mechanism to keep you alive?" he said to Matt, still smiling as if the apparent talk about him wasn't a bother at all. "But this isn't a social gathering, is it?" he went on, stepping away from Matt and beginning to scan the huge hall. "That Marcus, he called just the three of us here, I'm willing to bet the Society's commission is in. I wonder, though…" his words trailed just then as he slowly turned his head and looked at the youngest of the group who was busy studying a statue sitting on one of the many display tables scattered around the main hall of the manor.

Matt followed the gaze, understanding the question without needing to hear it. "He wanted nothing to do with them." His head turned back toward Xanatos and he asked "How'd you get him to come, anyway?" Xanatos opened his mouth to answer the question, but whatever he said was muted by the sudden booming voice of their 'host'. A voice that sent chills up Matt's spine.

From an archway to the west of the main staircase the voice bellowed "Greetings!" to the men and the source of that voice, which was not a voice at all, came from the lips of a beautiful blonde woman easily in her thirties dressed in a most formal business suit; one that almost looked as though it were tailored for a man. "Good of you to come." The woman spoke, her voice a disturbing mesh of dual tones that echoed in their minds rather than their ears. Her words also held no hint of the sentiment they would imply, but instead were laced with disdain and annoyance. "Now, follow me so we may have you out of my home quickly." The woman said before turning away and walking toward a nearby set of stairs, this set leading down instead of up like the rest of the house. The men were reluctant to follow at first, somewhat shocked by the less than warm welcome from the woman.

David was the first to follow and made an effort to catch up with his host until he was sure she was in whisper range. "Your new body doesn't suit you, Marcus." He said in that same sarcastic tone he'd used before, as if meaning to insult this person. The 'woman' stopped in her tracks for a moment and glared directly at Xanatos, saying bitterly with that strange and disturbing voice, "Lecture me when you stop the life extension treatments. Until then, leave my methods of staying alive alone, David!" and with that she began to walk again with the three of them following behind.

It was Fox who'd noticed that Matt was straggling farthest behind, seemingly on purpose as if he hated to look at the 'woman' David had called Marcus. The young man got a little curious and slowed his paces a bit until Matt was closer, asking in a hushed voice "Fucking creepy, isn't it?" to which Matt replied with a nod of his head and an equally hushed voice.

"In all the years I've been involved with the Society, I've never gotten used to the things some of their members are involved in. That man, he's obsessed with living forever through soul transference. Sounds like some black magic to me." he said.

Fox let out a little chuckle just then and Matt looked at him with a confused expression, wondering what it is he'd said that was so amusing. Fox just smiled and raised a hand to his head, rubbing his forehead with two fingers briefly before dropping them back at his side and saying "It's people like him that made me reject the Illuminati; they care only about their own personal agendas and it makes me sick." Fox paused a moment in his speech to look at David walking side-by-side with Marcus and apparently having some sort of conversation, though about what he couldn't quite tell. "I really don't get him sometimes, his motivations. He's been so different since…" he trailed off and suddenly his head drooped, eyes staring at his stepping feet. "The guys were the same way when Elisa had her accident. None of them ever quite got over it, I suppose."

Matt just listened to him speak for now, waiting for the younger male to get off his chest whatever was weighing so heavily on him. He didn't know much about what happened to Fox's mother since the family had kept it secret and out of the public eye for as long as possible, but the mention of his old partner's accident brought a painful twinge to his old heart. He knew then what the young man was getting at, and he offered an assuring hand on his friend's shoulder, saying "People deal with tragedies in their own way, in their own time. Nobody ever gets over it, I'm sure you still feel the pain even now right? Some of us just show it in different ways, or not at all. I wouldn't let it bother you too much, just because you don't show your pain doesn't mean you don't have it." Fox's head raised and he offered an understanding nod, but nothing else in reply to Matt's attempt to comfort his friend.

The group arrived soon after at the entrance to a very large room and upon entering the three men were in a state of shock at the sight in front of them. The underground room was easily large enough to fit a small house inside itself and in the center of it stood a huge glass tank taking up about half the room in size, its walls seeming to come out of the very floor and stop just shy of the high ceiling. A series of grates lined cold granite floor around the tank, stretching near ten-feet outward from the tank and appeared to be drains for the massive amount of water that was used to fill up the glass tank.

Through the clear glass and water, the three could see that the floor and ceiling were adorned with elaborate transmutation circles shaped by some kind of white paint and outlined with white florescent lights 'inside' of the floor and ceiling. Fox was the first to step forward to try and get a better look; the symbols were almost alien to him. The young Fae crossbreed recognized a few of the symbols, but their placements and correlation with the more unfamiliar ones baffled him. In all his years of training in such things, he'd never once seen anything like this.

"What the hell is this?!" Matt shouted suddenly, turning toward Marcus who was walking away from the group now toward a large panel in one corner. 'He' paused a moment to look back at Matt with a face expressing annoyance and looking very much like he had something to say to the old cop, but he said nothing about it.

Marcus raised a hand to the control panel in the corner and flipped a switch, this causing the florescent outlines of the circles to suddenly turn on and illuminate the inside of the large tank. Fox took a step back away from the tank when the lights came on and turned around in the direction of David who was standing beside Marcus still, mumbling something to him while Marcus worked at adjusting something on the control panel. Fox looked back toward the tank and watched silently as the bright white light seemed to leak out into the markings drawn into the ground and ceiling. The simple white of paint became a subtle glow of white light, then got brighter and brighter ever slowly until they began to pulse with a light brighter than the fluorescent bulbs that outlined the circles. Fox new what this was, never had he seen it, but he knew what Marcus was about to do.

"My commission was not a simple one," Marcus said aloud as he stepped away from the corner with David trailing behind. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his hand, balled in a fist as he held something tightly clenched within. "But I found it at long last, the perfect solution to our little problem." Marcus turned his head just slightly and said to his guests "Stand still, if you would." And then took a stance in front of the glass tank with one foot in front of him and the other behind while he held his clenched fist behind his back and the other hand stretched outward toward the tank, slightly slanted toward the ceiling. The man in woman's skin took a long, deep breath and then began a soft and rhythmic chanting in a language none of the three men had ever heard before. The words being repeated in rhythmic succession, one verse right after the other until Marcus was out of breath.

The strange glyphs the had been shimmering so brilliantly before now seemed to burst outward with a powerful magic light that shot out from one circle toward the other until the twin pillars of light melded into on singular column of pulsating white and blue light as wide around as the limits of the glyphs each light erupted from.

Fox, who had long since backed away behind Marcus, was starting to feel uneasy about this. The spell that Marcus was casting seemed ominous and the intense magical energies radiating from that column of light seemed to seep into him and it made his stomach lurch. He stumbled back a few steps, lifting a hand to his head as he felt a little dizzy from the sudden pounding in the front of his skull. David noticed it first and looked at Fox with a worried glance before looking back at Marcus and calling "Are you sure you know what you're doing!?" Marcus did not answer, however, and left David at a loss as his eyes darted back and forth between the 'man' and Fox obviously suffering only a few feet away.

"He's summoning something…" Fox chocked out a little before falling to one knee. Matt ran to his side and kneeled beside Fox. He too turned his gaze up to Marcus who was still in the middle of casting his spell. Limited as his knowledge was of the mystic arts, Matt had 'infiltrated' the Illuminati long enough to know the dangers that came with breaking a spell before it was cast in full. Though his young friend's suffering was clouding his judgment and he found his wrist clenched in Fox's quivering hand just as it was reaching for the gun holstered under Matt's trench coat. "Just wait…" was all Fox was able to say before his hand fell limp at his side. The boy had always been overly sensitive to magical energies, but this was new to him and it made him worry what sort of creature Marcus was conjuring.

With each breath taken the chanting began anew and the two older men began to notice a soft green glow emanating from Marcus' body, growing brighter as his chanting became louder and more forceful. His voice also began to change, the twin tone diminishing rapidly as the faint green light grew brighter and brighter until only the singular, female, voice remained. The chanting grew louder still as one of the two voices left the mouth of Marcus' vessel. The words became commanding and malicious as if the caster was struggling hard to keep 'his' grip on the spell. The body's glowing light began to slowly fade, becoming focused in one spot where it had once covered the female body from nose to toe tip. It almost seemed to drain out of that slender frame and into the outstretched hand until the limb was lost in a blaze of green flame. Marcus screamed a final booming incantation and then fell silent altogether; his outstretched hand blazed on for a few moments and then the fire grew still and began the same act of draining out of Marcus' arm as it had done the rest of the body. Into the palm of his hand the fire flowed, swirling and churning into a brightly glowing sphere; a cry of pain escaped in a dull green wisp and Fox knew then.

"Necromancy?!" he uttered painfully, still suffering under the influence of that throbbing pillar of light.

"A soul makes up the seal," Marcus spoke in cryptic reply to Fox, the sphere of green light departing from him and floating about the room for a few stray moment before letting out another cry of pain in the form of a wisp puff as it was slowly drawn in past the glass of the water tank and toward the column of energy. Its screams and cries made it obvious it was being drawn in against its will. "A soul to break it!" Marcus cried just as the thing slammed into the pillar and it erupted in swirling green flame that seemed to be melding with the swirl of blue light that stood out against the dominant white.

This whole thing was too much for Fox, the pressure from this strange and intruding energy quickly became too much for him to take and his body fell to the floor, hands tightly clenching his throbbing head. "Father!" he cried out, writhing on the floor as the pain seeped from his head, down his spine and into the whole of his frame threatening to tear him apart. "FATHER!!" Fox screamed again. "MOTHER!!!"

* * *

Owen's pen stopped in mid signature and his head rose up slowly from the piles of papers he'd been working on since dusk that night. He felt a powerful sensation in the back of his mind that he all too rarely felt in the human world, it had almost gone unnoticed. Fox was hurting, suffering even and Owen had a very strong feeling of something else in the air around his favorite student. Something familiar, something he never expected to feel again for all of eternity.

This powerful presence didn't feel threatening, yet still Fox was suffering. The prudent thing at the moment would be to step in and assist his young charge, but…there were these reports that still needed filing when finished.

Owen shrugged his shoulders and finished his signature on the report before folding it in its appropriate file and moving on to the next one. "Boys will be boys." He said dryly to himself. Fox was suffering, on the brink of collapse, but he wasn't in danger just yet.

* * *

A soft click echoed the now silent walls of the room as Matt snapped the safety back in place on his gun. He noted momentarily then the glass of the tank he'd just shot into was far thicker that he'd thought as the bloody bullets he'd just shot through Marcus' back and skull hadn't even gone all the way through the glass. He'd expected the tank to shatter apart, but it was remarkably intact save for the huge cracks the bullets had put into the glass. The thought was a fleeting one, however, as his attention was focused on his young friend as well as what he'd just done and if the Illuminati council members would deem it a good shooting or come after him for killing one of their own. He could never tell with those people.

David held Fox close in his arms, a look of utter fear and panic plastered across his face. This was honestly the first time Matt had seen the schemer actually look worried and it worried him as well. "Son," David said to Fox, shaking him ever so gently to try and coax him into consciousness "Just hang in there, Alex, you'll be alright!" Matt holstered his weapon slowly and eyed the corpse a moment longer before his head snapped back to the sound of Fox calling out.

Fox sat up quickly and slipped out of his father's grasp, gasping for breath with eyes so wide Matt thought they were about to pop out of his head. "God!" he breathed, his blue eyes flickering bright green for a few short moments as if reacting to something.

He stood slowly, stumbling a bit in his first few steps, but Matt caught him before he fell.

"I was wrong." Fox breathed, leaning on Matt's supporting shoulder for balance as he stared intently into the depths of the now bloodstained water tank in the center of the large room. "He wasn't summoning a beast, he was…" Fox trailed off, leaning off of Matt and taking a few weakened steps toward the large tank; David wasn't far behind now and was ready to rush to his son's side if he so much as breathed abnormally.

Fox pressed his hands up to the tank and stared inside, seeing what was left behind now that the pillar of light had faded to an ever faint and transparent glow. In its center he could see it; the floating figure of what he'd at first assumed was a female gargoyle by the look of her limbs. Her skin was that of a dark earthen color as far as the arms and legs, the skin fading away at the elbows and knees into a rough looking violet hide he'd become so familiar with in his years living in the Eerie building, ending in three-toed feet and four-fingered hands with each finger and toe being capped with and ivory colored claw. Her hair was a dancing symphony of snowy locks longer than even Fox's own fiery mane and the strands danced and curled about the female's body in the water, hiding her face so that only the smallest details could be made out.

She was bound, wrists to ankles and thighs to torso in chains of a bright material uncharacteristic or iron. The years of submersion in water had tarnished their links, but Fox knew what they were. Silver. "Releasing a prisoner?" Fox finished his statement in a question, wondering now what Marcus' true intentions had been and what this had to do with the Illuminati.

"I saw something," Fox continued before his companions could ask what he was rambling about. His hands against the glass curled into fists and he suddenly took a step back, jerking his clenched fists back behind him as if he were pulling on something. His eyes flashed green again and the thick glass of the tank that Matt's bullets had not shattered suddenly broke apart and fell in a pile of razors at his feet. Fox jumped back then, a great backwards leap that landed him near the door, now behind his father and old friend who had to back up many steps themselves to avoid the torrent of water that flooded most of the floor before draining into the large iron grates around the tank. "A dream, or a vision," Fox looked once again at the body of this creature, now limp on the floor not seven feet from the three men. "I saw a little girl, held in the arms of a great beast that was trying to protect her." Fox started talking again, taking a few steps forward. The way he talked struck Matt as odd, there was more question in his words, almost as though he were trying to recount a memory that was quickly fading away. "She was scared, felt alone and clung to the beast like it was the only thing keeping her alive."

Fox took another step forward and crouched down in front of the limp body. "That little girl," Fox mused, speaking quieter now, as if to himself "was all alone, scared, and trap-"

Fox's musings stopped there when he noticed that feeling again, his head was starting to hurt again, but it was nothing to what he'd felt before. It was…controlled, contained now where it had been wild and savage before.

He stood up and stepped back, led by David's hand on his shoulder guiding him. "She's waking up." Fox mumbled, watching with widened eyes as the bound figure rose up slowly to her knees and lifted up her head as if to look at them, but drenched white hair obscured her face. The girl lurched forward all of a suddenly, then came a sickening sound as the female spewed out a thick, black liquid that almost looked like oil save for around the edges where it turned red as the liquid thinned.

"Lungs full of blood?" Fox wondered aloud, watching in a state of mild shock as the girl raised her head yet again and took her first labored breath. The breath was long, deep and raspy; she seemed to be in pain as her lungs filled with air. Could she have been injured? Fox wondered, thinking it would certainly explain the blood in her lungs, or so he reasoned.

Fox flinched and clamped his hands over his ears just then, as did the others, as the creature before them let out into the air a monstrous roar louder and more feral than the most enraged gargoyle cry any of them had ever heard. The sound bounced off the enclosed walls of this room, making the attack on their ears painful to the point that both older men fell to their knees in pain as the new throbbing in their skulls sapped their strength. The natural strength that came with Fox's lineage and training was, right now, the only thing keeping him from joining his companions on the floor. His eyes looked to the female creature on the floor, a sharp amber glow showing through the veil of hair as she screamed.

Moments later, as the air in the girl's lungs were slowly beginning to empty out; Fox noted that the feral roaring had turned into a cry more human sounding than it had started out as. The pitch became lower and lower as her lungs emptied until Fox picked up the distinct sound of sobbing through the sound. Again he came to his conclusion that she was injured and fully expected her to start coughing up blood all over again.

"What the fuck was that!?" Matt snapped at the creature as if it understood "What is this thing?" He turned to David, expecting an explanation.

"I'm not sure." was all David offered in explanation as he patted his ears with his palms to try and make the ringing stop. Again he was composed, back to his normal self despite the pain in his head. "Quite a set of pipes on that one, though." He remarked in sarcasm.

Fox, on the other hand, was too immersed in the sight of the creature to pay much attention to the conversation the two older men began when the loud screaming had died down at last, leaving the female before him as she was before, on her knees and in a slump with her head down. The sound of sobbing was much clearer now and Fox could make out what he thought may be tears dripping off her chin. "What's the matter with you?" Fox whispered, stepping a little bit closer to try and examine her closer.

It was then that he noticed something amiss, something about that girl from his vision he'd only just recalled. "Marcus!" Fox snapped, looking at the corpse and its fist still tightly closed around whatever Marcus had taken from his pocket minutes ago. Fox pried open the dead fist and took away what was inside, a pendant made of a strange black stone Fox didn't recognize, hanging on a chain of gold attached to the motif of a dragon's claw clasped tightly around the tear shaped obsidian crystal. Fox wasn't sure what to make of it, he'd never seen a gem like this before and it astounded him that light actually seemed to pass through it despite the rock being black as night. The unpleasant vibrations weren't familiar either, but Fox clearly sensed strong magic within. The object was an ominous riddle he didn't care to solve. All he knew was that it belonged around this woman's neck, somehow he knew it.

"Here." Fox said silently, not expecting this girl to hear him over the sounds of her own painful sobbing. He slipped the necklace gently over her head and then stepped back, his instinct telling him to make room as soon as he could. Just as he'd made his distance Fox felt that pain returning to his head, so he leaned against the wall for a brace just in case this got out of hand again while Matt, seeming to have had a similar though, had already unlocked the safety on his service pistol and had his fingers curled tightly around the grip, ready to draw any time. David just stood perfectly still, waiting to see what would happen with a look of exited anticipation so different from the look of utter horror he held only minutes ago.

The girl's sobbing stopped only moments after Fox had placed the necklace around her neck where he was so certain it belonged. The three before her noticed that amber glow from beneath the wet hair, eyes burning and surging with a deep inner power. The female let out a low growl in her throat, much like the threatening guttural groan of a tiger or lion, then suddenly fell silent as her body began to glow with a soft blue light. Her body was soon engulfed in it; the energy in that light wafting off her in small waves like the way flames from a bonfire jump into the air before vanishing into nothing. Only that bright amber glow could be seen through the blue and soon even that was gone.

The light didn't seem at all dangerous to Fox, nothing at all like he'd sensed before, the energy was the same, but it felt more than just contained. It felt calm, secure and even warm. A control device? Fox wondered and his eyes locked onto that pendant in a curious gaze.

"Jesus Christ," Matt said under his breath, a look of amazement on his aged face. "What in Hell was Marcus doing?" he turned toward David who was still viewing the spectacle with an expression of utter awe at the power before him.

"Beautiful." David said aloud, then turned his head toward Matt and said, "An abomination, Capt. Bluestone." Matt's look of confusion was matched by the one on Fox's as David made his best attempt to explain this. "I knew Marcus had been researching this for years, but I had no idea he'd actually found a way to wake this one up." David's lips curled into a devious grin as thoughts raced through his head at his own mentioning of the research Marcus had been involved in. "A child that, by all laws of physics and nature, should not be able to exist. She is the daughter of a dragon and a vampire, the lost gods of the ancient world."

Somehow, in the back of his mind, Fox just knew that his father had been lying when he said he didn't know what that girl was.

Matt looked to the girl on the floor, still engulfed in that faint blue light and tightened his grip on the gun under his coat. "Vampire?" he scoffed, not liking the sound of that in the least. He had a city to protect and the last thing he needed was this thing sucking on innocent people's blood.

"Correct," David continued, not seeming the least bit phased by Matt's reaction "True vampires, to be exact. The noble creatures they used to be before they degenerated into oversized mosquitoes you read about in horror novels or see in the movies. This…thing…is the legendary abomination of two completely opposite species that waged a private war on the Catholic faith and went on a rampage all over Europe, slaughtering Knight Templar and priests, men and women alike, young and old the same. I'm willing to bet that she is as we see her now because she couldn't be stopped. Marcus probably figured her the perfect subject for the plan our 'brothers' are so anxious to set into motion." David turned a glance to Fox and muttered to his son "We should take her back to the Erie, don't you think so Alex?"

"Are you insane?" Matt shouted, stepping up to David and getting right up in his face "Tell me you didn't just suggest we take this thing into my city. You just said it was a killer and you want me to let you take it back to the Erie where it could potentially escape and be set loose on this city full of innocent people!? Illuminati be dammed, I won't let you or them jeopardize the people of my city, Xanatos!" Matt's mouth opened to continue, but his ranting was suddenly silenced as another booming roar echoed the walls. The three turned their attentions quickly toward the chained creature, hair having been shaken back, now staring at Matt with violet eyes that burned with resentment and hate and a face that bore a scowl that would send any other human into a corner out of fear.

"Enough mockery!" she snapped at Matt, her voice much more human sounding that that feral roar she'd displayed moments ago. "I am not a thing," she growled, hate lacing every word "Nor am I a killer, my actions were in defense and defiance of your church's claim to power. As a child I watched your human 'priests' cut through the bodies of my mother's people. Dragons and the un-evolved alike, even children's heads were displayed as trophies of the so-called purge. Honor demands blood for blood and I took it back in full!" She sneered and cast a glance toward the corpse of Marcus, his most recent corpse "Not that your kind knows the meaning of honor."

Fox was the first to break from his shock and speak up "Our kind?" he asked, more curious about the meaning behind this woman's ranting than the damage to his own pride from those harsh accusations against him for just being human. Partly so at least.

"People of the Light," She spat at the pin decorating David's lapel, slowly and awkwardly struggling to get to her feet despite her bonds. "A brotherhood, by name alone, full of opportunists and the greedy scum of human nobility." a heavy sigh filled her lungs when she had somehow managed to make it to her feet, but the small bit of relief was soon replaced by a loud shriek as the girl's struggling caused her to lose her footing and fall backward onto the floor. A roar of pain echoed the walls as she fell flat on her tail, probably bruising it.

Fox was surprised when he saw it, surprised mostly that he'd not noticed it before now. He'd been tripping over gargoyle tails since he was old enough to walk on his own, it had been a habit to look out for them so he should have noticed. It was a long tail, too; Fox imagined it long enough to drag on the floor behind her when she walked and it as well greatly resembled the gargoyles he knew so well, purple like her eyes and that strange hide that composed a percentage of her body. 'Dragon, huh?' Fox wondered to himself, astounded by the similarities.

"Curse my blood!" the woman screamed, still struggling against the silver chains binding her. David raised a hand to his face to mask his amusement at the girl's fall. He cast a look to Fox and gave him a slight nod. Fox, knowing what his father was asking of him, approached the woman slowly and crouched down next to her. "Let me try." He offered and was met with and angry glare, but it soon faded and she gave a defeated nod of approval.

Fox gripped the chains around her torso and felt them out for a moment, and then his eyes flashed green and one of the links in the chain lit up with the same emerald light. Fox grabbed at the chain there and pulled, the green light exploding in a blinding flash that lasted less than a second and left the link that had been glowing in pieces on the floor.

"Since you heard us talking, and have obviously shown distaste for our organization, I don't suppose asking you to come with us to meet with the council that commissioned your release would work," David spoke calmly as his son worked at the chains, snapping the weakest links where he found them "So I would like to offer you shelter at the very least, if you would accept it." Matt looked at David with a suspicious glance, he'd never known Xanatos to disappoint the Illuminati so it came natural for Matt to suspect David was cooking something in his head.

Fox stepped back when he'd finished breaking all the chains, leaving the wrist and ankle shackles as the only things left. He'd managed the break their chains as well, but the shackles themselves seemed too sturdy to be broken through the same trick. "I can't get these off without tools." Fox said, and then offered his hand to help the girl to her feet. The hand was rejected and the girl stood up, shakily at first and stumbled a bit as she took her first steps. Another similarity that Fox noticed was that she walked on the balls of her feet, another trait similar to the gargoyles he knew so well.

"I have no justifiable reason to trust a human." The girl said to David as she looked down at herself and the tattered tunic and slacks she wore, water rotted and full of holes in all the wrong places "Tch, my luck," she growled to herself, crossing her arms over her chest and curling that long tail once around her waist and draping it over her front. "Time would erode everything but my bonds." She shook her head and looked around the room at the three men and the female corpse bearing a hairpin with the same emblem of them Illuminati that two of the three men wore on their coats. "I'll never trust a human again, however…" she looked toward Fox and sighed "I have no other options." She looked back to Matt and David "I can feel in the air around me that time has been unkind to the world I left behind, much time has passed and I am left a foreigner in an alien land." She reasoned, admitting to her own disgust that she'd have to give a measure of trust to them. "One of you showed me kindness." She gestured toward Fox, then turned an angry glance back to Matt and David "So I will concede a measure of trust and go with you, however I will not meet with your organization. I owe no favors to humans, nor would I grant them if I did and if you try to force me this abomination will be in the wind before your heart stops beating after I tear it from your chest."

"Wonderful." David said with a grin, then turned away and pulled out a cell phone from a pocket and pressed a button on the speed dial. "Owen?" he spoke into the device, making the woman lift an eyebrow curiously. "We need an extraction, a clean one if you will. The GPS chip in my phone will tell you where we are." There was a pause and the girl's attention was pulled away by Matt, the human who had slandered her so minutes ago, removing his coat and offering it to her to cover up with.

"Do you have a name?" Fox asked, feeling a little silly to even ask for a few different reasons. "My name is Alexander Fox Xanatos." He offered, hoping that she'd offer hers out of courtesy if nothing else. "This guy here is Matt Bluestone." Matt just nodded his head at Fox's introduction, still holding out his coat in silent offer.

"Zyon Velhart." The girl offered back, hesitantly taking the coat and using it to cover herself with. She hated that Matt had made such a gesture for now she felt guilty for her own slanders. It seemed to be a common pattern in her existence for humans to amaze and disgust her at the same time.

"Right, let's go!" David said cheerfully after hanging up his phone, opening up the door leading out and waiting for the others to follow. Zyon, who was still hesitant to extend this measure of trust, straggled behind for a few moments. She turned slowly to the shattered glass tank and the magical markings that had been used to free her from her nightmare. She wondered to herself just how much time had passed and uttered a silent plea to the ages that her thoughts were not right. "Be alive, Desmina," she muttered to herself, turning back to the door and following the group "Be alive, keep your promise." She finished her plea, hoping against hope that time had not taken everything from her as she so feared.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2- Time**

Zyon let out a heavy sigh to the sky, her breath fogging out in front of her in the cold air. This sight depressed her even more than her rude awakening had; rain always seemed to have that effect on her. She'd hoped to see the moon after so long in the darkness, or perhaps the stars, but all she was met with were thunderous clouds and freezing cold rain. She'd reasoned that she'd awoken in winter, her only bit of solace thus far. Zyon hated the heat of summer days more than she loathed the rain so waking to the cold air of winter offered her some comfort to battle her bitter emotions toward the loathsome situation she'd placed herself into. Going with those humans had hardly been an easy choice and somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered what else she might have done.

"What choice had I?" she wondered aloud to herself, her eyes slowly closing as she stood under the rain as it beat down on her face and soaked through the coat she'd been given to cover herself. She wondered if she did have a choice, if she could have just run away at her first opportunity, but to what end? She wasn't even strong enough to heal a simple bruise, how could she expect to last very long in a world she knew nothing about? No, until her strength found her again she would need to remain with these creatures. It would be a good opportunity to learn more of the boy she'd met, the one who bore the mark of the red dog on his eye. She'd never seen a human before that could summon such magic without invoking a spell; it intrigued her.

Her eyes opened again and she looked out at the view of the city below this great tower. A spire of metal and stone rising into the very clouds, the view from its peak bothered her greatly, much like the helicopter ride over here. It bothered her that humans, resourceful as they were, had achieved what she never could. It was yet another slap in the face to her draconic pride to know that even humans, who were never born to fly, had managed it.

The thought brought a twinge of pain to her and she considered her own undeveloped body. Her back tensed tightly and Zyon growled low in her throat as she felt the talon-tipped mounds of violet flesh above her shoulder blades brush the wet fabric of the coat on her back. She had been so close, a mere fifty years and her wings would have grown in fully and she would have at last known the joy her mother and kin knew, but all hope of attaining the glorious beauty of her mother's kind was torn away the day she was cursed with this interminable longevity. Her flesh, trapped in time, caught in a moment, would never age, never rot and never would her evolution be complete. The revolting reality of her body burned her inside like a flaming arrow shooting right through her stomach.

"Does it hurt badly?" came the voice of the red-haired man who had been standing out of the storm under an archway for the past few minutes since Zyon had stopped to take in the view. Her eyes narrowed at him some and she growled low, thinking maybe she'd spoken her thoughts out loud and that he had been eavesdropping. "Your tail." Fox confirmed for her before she could ask what he meant. Zyon hadn't noticed until then, but she had at some point curled her tail around her front and was holding it in her hands, the 'thumb' of her hand closest to the base massaging the spot where she'd fallen and bruised herself.

It calmed her considerably that Fox had been asking about her physical pain and not her brooding thoughts. She released her tail and turned away from the city view, her eyes met Fox's for a short moment as she stepped through the archway "Only a bruise," she said plainly "It will heal in a day." With those words she looked off down the hallway that the archway opened into, wondering where her other hosts had gone to in the minutes she had lost herself. Fox held out an arm inward, silently gesturing that they should go inside if she was ready. Zyon dipped her head in a short nod and began following Fox, though she made extra effort to stay a few feet behind him in case she had to get away quickly.

The stone walls of the castle were lined with strange lights she couldn't explain, lights similar to the ones she'd seen on the inside of the grand manor where her release had occurred. It reminded her of faerie fire, but brighter and she sensed no magic from those lights. It was a strange spectacle, at once wondrous and worrisome; she wondered how much time had really passed since the time of her nightmare's beginning. She also wondered what horrors humankind had devised in that time. She knew, much to her own dread, that humans have a habit of making weapons out of anything and if they had managed to harness light without the use of flame or magic, then surely somewhere a weapon just like these luminous points were causing pain that she did not want to know.

Zyon's feet stopped briefly as she passed a closed door, her sensitive draconic ears twitching at the sounds of a conversation taking place behind the cedar doorway. One of the voices she'd recognized as the human David, the elder Xanatos. He appeared to be speaking to a group of others, their voices unfamiliar to her. Most of the voices were male, and each one sounding excited about whatever it was the human had been telling them about, but she did hear one female voice and this comforted her a bit. Much as she distrusted humans, she distrusted males in general even more; it was something she couldn't control, an instinctive impulse in the back of her mind that told her men couldn't be trusted. Whatever the source, Zyon was sure that decades upon decades of witnessing the 'glory' of patriarchal society contributed greatly to these impulses. She knew that women could be just as despicable, it was a thing she knew too well, but perhaps, she thought, having at least one more female around would give her some sense of security if things went the way she assumed they would at one point or another. Zyon despised being the eternal pessimist, but experience never gave her a reason to be otherwise.

"He's talking to the clan of the castle." Fox said, walking back to where Zyon had stopped once he noticed her footfalls no longer accompanied his. "You know of gargoyles?" Fox asked, guessing that confusion was behind Zyon's odd expression. Zyon's expression, though, changed quickly to a scowl at the mention of gargoyles. The ancient creatures inspired little bitterness in her still heart, but the word brought about many memories of one in particular that at once made her cringe and her chest ache with a painful longing and anxiety for her secret fear.

"I've heard tales." Zyon lied, feigning ignorance simply to keep Fox from prying into her personal thoughts. She knew this well to be a trait of humans, poking their noses where they didn't belong under the guise of concern. "Exactly where are you leading me?" Zyon asked, changing the subject at her first opportunity. Fox rubbed the back of his head for a moment; eyes cast down at the floor and let out a sigh as if frustrated. He turned back toward the long hallway and pointed to a metal door at the very end of it, "That's called an elevator," Fox explained, feeling a bit silly for having to explain something he found so simple. "We'll be taking it to another part of the castle where a room has been prepared for you." Zyon's left brow rose at this explanation, more intrigued that she already had a room in this castle than the function of whatever lay beyond those metal doors.

The two continued the rest of the way toward the elevator, Zyon clenching the coat on her back as tightly shut as she could make it while they walked past strange devices that seemed to follow her and Fox as they walked by. She swore the things were watching them and it made her feel even more vulnerable and exposed. She was still weak and virtually helpless in her current condition; she even dared to think a mere human could take her down as she was now. It also didn't help her mindset to know that her body was almost completely exposed beneath the loose trench coat that elder human had loaned her. The dawn couldn't come soon enough for her this time, she needed to feed and badly; it infuriated her to not have enough strength to materialize a simple set of clothing much less defend herself if the need arose.

Zyon watched curiously as Fox stopped in front of the metal door and just stood there after pressing something on the wall beside it, he just stood there with his eyes cast up at a series of numbered lights that flickered on and off from five up until the light marked with a twelve. Zyon's brow rose yet again as her ears picked up the sound of something moving beneath them, steadily rising from far below until it stopped right inside that metal door. Her eyes grew wide with amazement as the doors parted to reveal a small lighted room beyond these doors. Fox stepped in and kept one hand on the door to keep it from closing while he waited for Zyon who seemed to be taking her time in studying the outside of the elevator before she took the proverbial plunge and stepped inside this strange device she knew nothing about. She stepped in at last and took her place in a corner as far away from Fox as the tiny room would allow.

Zyon was never sure what to expect to happen next, she thought that perhaps the tiny room was some sort of teleportation chamber, yet she sense no kind of magic in the room other than the tiny ripples she could feel in the back of her mind when that red-haired human was close. The doors closed and Zyon watched as Fox pressed a button on a panel near the door. She room suddenly jerked, as if the whole castle had just been shaken, and Zyon's hands flung out to her sides, digging her talons into the walls to her left and right. She clutched her fingers in those holes made by her claws and her eyes quickly darted around the tiny room for signs of what had caused the sudden jerk, she swore the sudden shock had stirred a nervous heartbeat from her silent chest. Fox just stood where he was near the door, looking at Zyon with a confused expression for a few moments before lifting a hand to cup his mouth as he tried to mask his amusement for the poor girl's fright.

Zyon's fright faded after a few short moments when she realized that the sudden jerk was the elevator starting to move upward. The room was apparently a lift of some kind that was taking them to a higher floor of the castle, she suddenly felt very foolish for her reaction and seeing how Fox tried to hide the humor he seemed to find in her naiveté made her face burn and her head hang in shame. She pulled her fingers out of the new holes in the elevator walls and muttered under her breath "Apologies…" Fox simply shook his head and let out a chuckle he couldn't hold back. The amusement melted away from the situation quickly enough when Fox's head throbbed again, a single painful pulse in the back of his head, near the tip of the spine. Once his eyes refocused he looked back to his guest, thinking her the source of his pain from what had happened in Marcus' basement earlier that night. He wasn't entirely sure what to make of what he saw. A single arc of faint blue light rose off the female's shoulders, each end seeming to come from her shoulder joints. It almost looked like an electrical jolt, the way it began as two rope-like lines rising off her shoulders with their ends traveling up the sides of her head before meeting and merging into an arc, then breaking off and dissipating into nothing in the air above them. The dissipation seemed timed, for at the very moment that the two ends of the arc broke off Zyon's shoulders she had let out a heavy sigh like she'd been holding her breath. Fox also could see, now that the last of the blur had fully cleared from his eyes, that Zyon's eyes were locked on her feet and her hands tightly clenched each other as she held them in front of her, she seemed frustrated.

"I'm sorry," Fox said, trying to sound as sincere as he felt he was for the apparent embarrassment his laugh had added, or perhaps whatever blow he may have struck to her pride. He'd already taken her pride into account, it did not seem to control her as pride did with so many, but it also seemed to be a big part of her personality, what little of it she'd shown in the past two hours. Fox forced a smile and hesitantly laid a hand on the strange girl's shoulder, hesitantly because that feeling in his mind somehow made him think she was going to bite if he got too close. "We have workers who get paid to fix things like these, it'll be fixed in no time and they'll be earning their pay." Fox tried to assure the woman, his voice calm as it could be.

Zyon's lavender eyes rose to meet Fox through the snowy bangs that annoyingly hung in her face. She blew a quick puff of air out the corner of her mouth, blowing some of those bangs away only to have them fall right back into place. "I'll not make the mistake again." Zyon whispered then lowered her gaze back to her feet in shame.

The two stood in silence for the rest of the ride, Fox felt that it was longer than it usually was when simply riding between floors and the awkward silence certainly didn't help. Fox breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the tiny bell sounded and the elevator slowly came to a stop at their floor. He didn't notice Zyon's head snap at the sound or the way her draconic ears seemed to twitch like one would expect a cat's ears to do, nor had he seen the second arc of blue rise, this time from her elbows, when the female mentally scolded herself for her jumpiness. Not seen, but surely felt.

Fox's eyebrow rose curiously a moment later when the momentary blur faded from his vision and he beheld the statuesque figure that was Owen Burnett, standing patiently outside the elevator door as if he'd been waiting for them, though the small stack of files Owen held to his side under one arm suggested otherwise. Fox saw an opportunity nonetheless.

"Welcome home, Alexander." Owen said as Fox stepped out of the elevator, keeping his hand on the door as he waited for Zyon to follow. Owen peered in past Fox and asked, "Your father's guest?" as if he hadn't already been informed.

Fox gave a gentle nod of his head, still holding onto the Elevator door even after Zyon stepped out. "I have something important that needs my attention," Fox began, half lying about his intentions solely for the sake of the woman standing only inches away from Owen and himself, the truth of his coming request was conveyed between them through the strong telepathic link Fox and Owen had forged together over the decades of his magical training. "Would it be too much to ask you to escort our guest to her room for me?"

Owen received the message loud and clear and understood completely. "Of course, if the young lady does not mind a change of envoy." Both men noticed the girl flinch visibly when Owen had used to word 'young' toward her, Owen's eyebrow rose curiously at this, but soon the thought passed.

"If you must, then go" Zyon said, taking the heavy insult of being passed off on a servant with as much humility as her oversized pride would allow. Her eyes raised from her taloned feet then, the dragon woman seeing Owen for the first time through those thick bangs in her eyes. She eyed Fox for a moment, then turned her obscured gaze back to Owen and back to Fox a final time before her eyes met back with her feet. Both men seemed somewhat confused by those glances, though Fox showed it far more than Owen.

After Fox had passed introductions back and forth between Zyon and Owen he stepped back into the elevator and allowed the door to close. Once safe behind those metal doors Fox's professionalism shattered as his body slumped back against the elevator wall and his thumbs hooked on the hand bar. Despite the pain in his head starting to fade away completely, Fox felt no elation for having passed off the girl onto another. He saw her reaction and new that he'd injured the girl's pride. Fox sighed heavily and reached for the button to his floor; he indeed had something to prepare for, he had to get ready for his session with Puck. They were to decipher the meaning behind the vision Fox had when he, his father and Matt witnessed Zyon's summoning and also to ask his ancient teacher of the nature of that woman's seemingly weak, yet potent power and why it affected him so. Still, Fox felt guilt for having run away, despite the reason for wanting to be away from that girl he had injured his own pride for having acted so disrespectful toward one who so obviously felt little love for humans. Fox couldn't help cringing at the terrible similarities and startling differences that girl's personality held to that of another he knew.

"Nothing I can do now." Fox sighed as the elevator began to move toward his floor. However, being clear of the source to his terrible migraine hardly set his mind at ease. That woman was not human, clearly and possessed some kind of power Fox had never before seen the likes of. His thoughts wandered to his father and the Illuminati, Zyon's knowledge and disdain of them. What was that woman, how did his father and Marcus know so much about her and what was the Illuminati planning? Fox had a bad feeling, a horrible feeling.

* * *

Zyon's steps were halted suddenly when her eyes caught another one of those strange devices coming out of the walls following her as she walked behind Fox's servant, Owen. She took a moment to consider the strange device for the first time, standing on the very tips of her clawed toes to try and get a close look at the device. Each that she had seen to this point was out of her reach, placed very near to the high ceiling where Zyon could not get to them. She could probably claw her way up there if she so wished, but after the incident in the elevator, the thought hadn't even crossed her mind to put her talons to work on her host's property.

She took a step back, out of the thing's line of sight and watched as it slowly turned back toward her direction. She stared straight at the thing's big glass eye and thought for a moment, then walked the other direction toward Owen and watched as the device turned once again in her direction. She knew it! Just by the look of it she knew, this was no living thing and the way it followed her told her that this thing was indeed some sort of tool used for observation. She hadn't quite deciphered how it worked, but she imagined a person on the upper floor watching through the device somehow. She guessed that these humans were not as trusting as they had originally appeared and began to rethink her course of action. Perhaps she would need to take her leave of them sooner than anticipated, but that was a choice to be made when she had the means to take that leave. Right now she was too weak, and too smart to make an enemy of anyone in her current state.

Zyon crossed her arms over her chest and considered the device for a bit longer before Owen, standing right where he was when Zyon had stopped following, remarked behind her back "If you are finished, may I suggest we press on?"

Zyon's head cocked at the thing one more time before shrugging her shoulders and resuming her place many paces behind Owen. She followed him a short ways down the hall the elevator opened into, walking up a short flight of stairs and halfway through a third hallway before stopping at a wooden door, plain and unremarkable amongst the many others in the hall. Owen pulled from a pocket a strange rectangular object and slid it halfway into a slot under the doorknob, a light flashed green above the slot and Owen pulled the item out and replaced it in his pocket. Zyon's ears twitched as she heard the door's lock click and she thought this mechanism some sort of human sorcery and that rectangular object some magic talisman designed to act as the key for such locks as these. This hardly made her feel secure as the lock was intended to do, such a lock, she reasoned, was meant for keeping prisoners in their cages. _So, the humans mean to keep me a prisoner_, she thought to herself as Owen opened the door and stepped inside, holding the door open as he awaited Zyon who seemed to have a habit for hesitation with doors.

The room prepared for her did not betray the characteristics of the prison Zyon so quickly thought it to be and was hardly a room in itself. The 'room' as a whole was bigger than the spacious residential cavern she had shared with her brother and sister in the days of her mortal youth in her mother's homeland. There were actually three rooms in total, making this one living area the equivalent of some well off human peasants that she had known back in her mortality. The main living area broke off into a sleeping area through a single door and that area in turn broke off into a much smaller room that Owen had to explain to Zyon as the bathing area. Zyon breathed an elated sigh at the sight of the bath tub, it was a welcome sight and when Owen explained the workings of the castle's plumbing and how she could easily get hot water for her bath without bothering any of the other staff members Zyon's eyes shimmered violet and her body was briefly outlined in a gentle purple blaze to match her shining eyes. Though the fire faded from her body as quickly as it had vanished from her eyes, Owen still noticed even though he had not turned back to the dragon in time to see it with his own eyes before Zyon recomposed herself to mask her obvious pleasure; she didn't want the human before her to think he had gained her trust. It was a simple and basic tactic she had learned to always employ, but Owen easily saw through it and almost cracked a smile at the woman's brief moment of elation.

The last of Owen's duties was to point out the desk drawer in the bedroom that contained the same kind of rectangular talisman Owen had used to unlock the door earlier. Zyon's head cocked curiously as Owen explained that it was a key-card and its function to unlock the door. Owen went over every detail of the card's function and how to use it properly in the electronic lock like he were saying it to a child, Zyon would have felt insulted if she wasn't too shocked to notice Owen's tone. He had just given her a means to come and go out of her room as she pleased, defeating her original assumption that she was to be a prisoner of the two men who bore the Illuminati's emblem. She was speechless and at a complete loss for any other assumptions, this was a turn of events she hadn't expected. By all logical circumstances she was a prisoner of those who had called her from the abyss of her nightmare, yet here they treated her like any ordinary house guest, even providing her with quarters that, Zyon presumed, had served as the room of a nobleman in the castle's day. She was confused.

Owen turned back to Zyon a moment later after having explained as much as he thought the out of touch female could process right now, including and explanation on where to find the kitchen if she was hungry and how the various appliances worked, and said in a very crisp and firm tone, "If there will be nothing else, I will be on my way." Owen paused for a long moment, politely waiting for Zyon to assure him that she would manage. She hesitated, stepping up to one of the two windows in the living area of her quarters and stared out at the shimmering city standing out in the darkness of this gloomy night. The lights of the city Zyon had come to understand as more than firelight stood out against the gloom and outlined each towering building for miles around as fearie fire would harmlessly outline the target of such detection spells and making them almost as visible in this darkness as she thought they would be in the light of day. Thoughts whirled in her mind like a whirlwind as the many explanations Owen had given and demonstrated repeated again and again like a Mobius Strip in her head. The thought of time re-entered her mind and Zyon asked the human, her words shaky and her chest aching with the anxiety of her secret dread, "The year."

Owen's inner self knew the meaning behind Zyon's question and did not ask for confirmation. He waited a moment before answering, knowing the woman was preparing herself for his answer. Owen's lips mouthed the words, his calm and even tone ringing in Zyon's head as though he had screamed it in her ear. Zyon flinched and Owen's face softened some when the female's body began to radiate a quiet blue aura from her body in all directions, more completely covering her body than the soft purple aura had only minutes ago.

"Six-hundred years…" Zyon breathed, the words came out labored as if simply confirming what Owen had just told her took such a heavily toll on her that she could hardly bare it.

"I will have new clothes brought to you soon." Owen said in his even tone, then began for the door. Zyon didn't even acknowledge him this time and Owen preferred it that way, she needed solitude to cope with what was an obvious tragedy in the old creature's mind and Owen was not about to deny her. After closing the door behind him and making sure he was alone in the hall, Owen Burnett melted away and that which was Puck came to the surface in the form of an empathetic sigh and a painful wince when the creature within cried out a name followed by a booming roar and a puff of blue flame bursting from under the closed door. Owen was not worried, he knew the characteristic of such aura emanations, knew them as harmless effigies of strong emotions. The painful empathy he displayed was for the recollection of the many humans the trickster had come to know and lose during his centuries on the mortal plane; the same pain he knew clawed at the heart of the woman behind the door had pained his playful heart much in the past years since his banishment from Avalon when he had truly begun to understand the weight of time on an immortal's shoulders.

The moment was fleeting, however and Owen Burnett returned to the composed, stone-faced human he had portrayed for so long. There were duties that needed his attention, class with Alexander for one and providing the lady with a fresh set of clothes just to name two of Owen Burnett's many tasks. He walked away from Zyon's room and down the long hall toward the nearest elevator, hoping in the back of his mind that the poor woman would not be consumed by grief for whoever it was she so painfully lamented.

Inside her room, Zyon lay in a heap on the floor, her limbs having gone their separate ways when the old dragon had gone limp and simply allowed herself to fall. She knew she would get an ungodly painful cramp if she remained this way for long, but she didn't care. Her violet hide hand clenched the black jewel of her pendant, the other cupping her caramel face as she sobbed into the clawed hand, the violent blue flame having long since faded when her rage died down into sorrow and despair. The bright blue aura was now dark; almost black was the blue light around her body and coming off in soft wafting motions with each sobbing breath she took.

"Desmina…" she cried, her sorrow slowly becoming rage as she spoke the name, then dying down again as she realized the object of her hate was not here for her to despise any longer, not after so long. She knew Desmina could not possibly still live. She was defeated at long last; Carina's curse had stolen from her the last thing she had, her vengeance and hate, leaving her with nothing left but an eternity of life and endless nightmares when she was too weak to not sleep. Despair engulfed her then and she felt herself weakening physically, her sobs taking their toll on her already weak body. She had one hope left, one final effort to salvage her sanity and prove to herself that Carina had not taken everything from her. She felt herself lightening, her mind slipping into a weak and fragile trance that she strengthened by slipping into unconsciousness. She felt herself rising above her body then and paused a moment to consider her prone body and the silver cord that served as her body's lifeline, though at this point she hardly cared if the damn thing was snapped and she could never return to her corporeal shell, though the bright blue aura that surrounded the cord served to remind her that she was bound to that shell and would be forced to return to it eventually. It didn't concern her now, in the calm of the astral plane Zyon used the only useful gift her father's blood accorded her and set out in search of the one thing she dared to hope Carina could not steal.

Zyon was too engulfed in her quest to notice that in the distance, another traveler had spotted her. The figured hid in the distance and under the guise of a large raven, easily the size of a man, perched upon an equally gigantic spirit tree. The entity cocked its feathered head as it spotted a familiar aura floating from the lower plane and into the far distance in search of something. This was interesting to the spirit and it knew that its mistress would wish to know that an old friend was back in existence. The giant bird crowed once, then slowly dissolved into a cloud of mist and, guided by its own cord, made the journey back to its body.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3 – Memory**

The rain was beating hard on the window in Demona's study that night, the rhythmic tapping on the glass as the many water droplets pelted the window was melodic, in a natural sort of way, to the gargoyle's sensitive ears. She leaned forward in her chair and stared deeply into the fire, watching the flames dance and listening intently to the heavy rainfall outside. She wondered what time it was and looked to the clock on the wall to find out, morning time; she'd been in a trance for the past three hours in a mental training session. Demona lifted up her favored spiked mace that she had placed in her lap to aid in the simulation and studied it for a long time while her mind recounted the events of her illusionary battles.

The past years had been quiet and uneventful for the gargoyle and she had at one point began to think her skills to be slipping away from her in place of quiet placidity. She yearned and hungered for a fight that would test her once indomitable prowess, but this was a quiet time in her life where adversaries were few and far between. To make sure her skills never diminished, Demona had taken up the practice of falling into a deep trance where, aided by a spell of her own design, she could create a space in her mind that recalled the abilities of every challenging enemy Demon had ever fought against and battle them over and over again in conflicts as vividly real as if she were fighting each of them in the flesh. She would often spend many long hours in such a trance and at times would rise from it with her muscles feeling sore despite her having never moved. She loved that feeling, the tingling sensation of a real workout that got her adrenaline rushing through her body. While she knew it was not the same, Demona still took great pleasure in such sessions and felt her skills as keenly as they had ever been before she ever began to doubt herself. It was still not the same and that yearning remained, but it sufficed and sated that desire as much as she could without going out and actually looking for a fight. Not that many were still alive that could match her anyway.

Demona stood and set the mace down on a rack of other weapons hanging on a wall, then took a glance about her study and considered her books. Her latest session had sparked a few memories in her and she thought about a particular piece of writing she kept in a compartment behind one of the bookshelves among many others she felt far too important to be kept in the open. The gargoyle stepped to the bookcase and pressed a hidden button under the paneling of one of the shelves. She stepped back and watched the bookshelf slide to the side, the wall just behind it going along for the ride as it opened into a small room about the size of a walk-in closet. Demona walked to the very rear of the tiny room and went through the long process of entering the first three passcodes into a keypad on the rear wall followed by a scan of her palm, another set of two passcodes and a retinal scan followed by three more seven-sequence passcodes before a wall panel on the left side wall nearer to the room's entrance opened up. Demona walked to it and entered one last passcode into the door of the safe behind the panel before she finally opened it up and pulled from it a thick roll of old parchments. Never once had it crossed the ancient gargoyle's mind that this was too much security, these storage units were placed all over the house and contained her most powerful magics and most precious treasures. No measure of security was extreme if it meant keeping her hard gained bounty in her possession.

Demona closed the safe and secured the bookshelf back where it had been before stepping out of her study and heading to the kitchen. She set the parchment role down on the kitchen table and took a few minutes to clear the table off completely and set a number of candles on the table in a particular pattern before lighting each one with a minor conjuration of flame and taking a seat in front of the parchment role. It was blank, or so it at first appeared. Demona seemed unconcerned as she flipped through the many parchments in the role until she was confident that she had the right page. She held up the page and dropped it, letting it float down over the group of candles where it would certainly catch fire, but the paper was not ordinary and Demona watched as the first of the flames reached out to try and latch onto the paper only to be consumed by the spell that enchanted each page in the parchment roll. When the page had fallen to the table it had snuffed out each of the candles Demona had lit and the ancient gargoyle grinned at how the spell worked. The letters that had once been faded by the enchantment were now before her, written in soot on the paper's surface, leaving the page itself completely unharmed. Demona slide the page back to her carefully and began to read. This ancient parchment roll had once been a journal, the most guarded thoughts of a very tired soul and the page which Demona now inspected was to be the final entry of the enchanter who had gone to such extents to keep his innermost thoughts such a secret from all but Demona who knew how the magic worked. She read on and remembered the one who wrote it.

Family: it spoke fondly of the word and its meaning in the writer's eyes. It spoke of loss and its weight on the heart, the acidic burn of guilt on the mind and the weight of choice against such pains. _"She will grow to hate me," _one line read and Demona's eyes closed a moment at a bitter memory the words sparked. _"Such a burden of hate she carries on those tiny shoulders, hate for my choice to love her mother and her in turn love me. Hate also for my choice to give her life, hate for her mother's loss which she will come to rightfully blame on me, hate for a life of turmoil which I will stir with my own manipulations. So much hate weighs so heavily on those tiny shoulders, and such guilt upon my own. Too late now to turn back time, too late now to unchoose this path; only may I now hope for the future which I entrust to them. The Pained One will guide her feet, I can only trust, in the way that will bring her the peace she so deserves and lift from those tiny shoulders the broad and heavy weight of hate. I reach the end of my days now and I find that no regrets weigh on my heart, save one; once I would have liked her to know me as her mother wished and as I yearned, but my choice has been made and action taken. I lived for my family, paving the way she may one day walk with the aid of the Pained One's guidance, and now I die for my family so that way will be cleared when the time finally comes. The end of days, I am almost happy to see it come; my dusk will be her dawn and my starless night will finally melt from the blinding radiance of day. May the Elders give her strength and grant me-" _

Demona studied the final line; the one she knew would never be finished, for many moments before leaning back in her chair to think.

"Choice, huh?" Demona thought aloud as memories of her long drama of a life played out in her mind. She'd spent a millennium on her single plan at revenge, and in the end it was she who foiled it with a careless slip of the tongue. 'Why had I told him?' she wondered, thinking back on the Praying Gargoyle statue Goliath had crumbled only when Demona had revealed that it would protect her kind from the virus. She hated that bastard all the more for what he'd done; her one and only chance to put her plan into action ruined by that bastard Goliath.

"I was so CLOSE!" Demona cried, slamming her fists on the table and shaking some of the soot letters on the enchanted parchment. Her eyes burned with rage and she slammed her fists on the table again, "Damn him!" she screamed, her rage pushing the initial question of her own judgment far out of her mind while she went through the motions of cursing Goliath and resenting whatever she had once seen in him. That, however, was nothing compared to the center of her hate for that bastard. Angela, sweet Angela, it was Goliath who had always held their daughter on such a short leash, it was Goliath who denied Angela the truth of her own heritage for such a long time and it was Goliath who forced Demona to sick a murderous human on her own daughter in order to arrange Goliath's demise, thus denying Demona of her daughter's love when the human turned on her as she should have known he would. It was all Goliath's fault; if he had only died then Demona would have had her daughter and perhaps the clan to lead in time. "Bastard!" she screamed again, eyes ablaze with such furry that it almost overwhelmed her, but then a stray thought crossed her mind and the word once again rang in her ears as she spoke it. "Choice…"

She didn't have to resort to such measures, she now knew, she could have just been with her daughter regardless of what Goliath felt. Why had she chosen such measures, out of desperation perhaps? She wasn't sure and as she considered the possibilities, her mind flashed back to that night in the church where she had locked eyes with Angela for the briefest of moments. She began to doubt again, doubt and wonder why she had told Goliath of her plan's one weakness. Had the look in Angela's eyes forced Demona to make some choice she herself hadn't even realized she had made, or had it truly been just a foolish slip of the tongue?

"Family." Demona mused, beginning to herself think of what the word truly meant to her. "Choice." Her eyes fell back on the parchment and she began to wonder about the writer again while also musing about her beloved daughter. "Choice…" she repeated, looking out the kitchen window at the city lights and thinking about the choice she had most recently made; the reason her life had been so uneventful for so many years.

Demona had sacrificed her lust for vengeance on that long ago day, agreeing to disengage her plans for worldwide genocide. Such a heavy price and one she was never able to pay in full as her company was constantly developing new weapons to be used in wars both public and private for the sole purpose of seeing more humans die. The process was slow and each new human birth impeded her plan to let them kill each other off, but the rewards she obtained for making such a distasteful agreement far outweighed her impatience. She had been granted a new beginning with her daughter and to her that was worth the heavy price. This was Demona's last chance with her child and she would not risk it for anything.

"Had you paid such a price, Rhen?" she asked to the parchment in front of her, thinking again about her past and the creature she had known so very long ago who had often spoke of things concerning family and the weight of choice. In her age, she began to think she understood the old one's words about sacrifice. "But in the end, what was the gain?" she asked, recalling things that Rhen never lived to see, things that she had seen and that made her question if her old companion's sacrifices had been as futile as he always feared they may be.

After all, she wondered, what hope was there now that Zyon was dead?

* * *

Draden crouched low on the ledge outside Dominique Destine's business office and glared out at the city filled to the brim with humans, the view from atop the Nightstone building affording him a spectacular view as the building was one of the biggest in the city. The devil lowered the sunglasses-which he wore to shield himself from the harsh glare of bright light-from his face and watched through his good eye as the clouds slowly parted to reveal the moon's position. By the look of the sky he'd been entranced from midday to dusk and through the better part of the night, and by the weight of his sopping wet coat he'd been rained on while he was.

"Must learn to be more aware of my body." The fiend thought aloud, shaking his head and tussling the shaggy black hair that was now matted to his head from the rain. He was lucky the heavy rain and wind hadn't blown him off his perch or made him slip while his consciousness was elsewhere. He may have been immortal, but pain was still pain and a fall from this height wasn't something he cared to endure. Not to mention the time he'd have to spend recovering from that kind of accident, time during the daylight hours when he was most needed.

But he had other things to think on, more important than himself, right now.

Six centuries and he still knew the woman when the he saw her, and on the astral plain there were no lies. She was alive, drew breath again and would soon be hunting his Mistress once again. But worse of all, she was in this city, if his senses did not fail him, and that meant the girl was in danger.

Angela was of his Lady's blood, and she would know it the moment she looked upon the youthful gargoyle's face. Hot tempered as she was, the beast would rend Angela's flesh the first chance she got. And so he was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, he needed to inform his Mistress of this discovery as soon as possible. On the other, Angela needed to be warned, he could only sense that the dragon was in the city and would have to scry-something that took energy he might need later-to find her precise location. To add to his dilemma, Angela would not have left the castle with the rest of the clan as she'd spent the last week flying off to meet with her mother and needed to spend time away from her to keep the others who didn't already suspect suspicious of her faltering patrols of late by staying back to guard the Eery as the warrior Hudson once had.

"Hudson." Draden muttered under his breath, clenching his left fist tightly as it suddenly became heavier with the weight of the elegantly crafted sword he summoned from extra dimensional space where he stored it and many other trinkets and trophies. A grin tugged at the fiend's lips as he hoisted up the sword and studied it, the memory coming to mind of how he had come to possess it.

Ah, those were the days, he thought to himself as the moonlight glinted off the blade. Hudson had been a fine opponent, and one he could truly respect. Of all the clan, the old gargoyle seemed the only one who truly understood that he bore no ill will to the clan. He was bound to certain laws of Immortals, and of loyalty to his Mistress that gave him little choice when Goliath and the more aggressive, younger gargoyles crossed his path. Of all the lives the devil had taken in his many centuries of life, he lamented Hudson's murder the most.

But now was no time to reminisce about the past. He had a task to attend to, and after careful consideration of his options he found it more prudent to inform his Mistress of this development instead of risking approaching Goliath for Angela's sake.

Draden dismissed the sword back to its dimensional pocket somewhat reluctantly, having to fight off the instinct in the back of his devil's mind to carve out his revenge on the mortals from the hides of the first human he saw. That, sadly, was an impulse the vampire could never rid himself of.

Resigning himself to the task at hand, Draden leaned forward over the ledge and allowed himself to fall. The crisp air rushing around his soaked body left him shivering, but he had to admit the freezing blow dry a far better sensation than being drenched by even colder rain water. He fell and fell, watching as the ground drew closer and closer as gravity pulled at him to ever increase his speed. For a moment he wondered, if there were no ground to land on and he fell forever with gravity's pull ever increasing his speed, could he eventually fall so fast that his own body tore itself asunder until naught remained? Wouldn't that be a fun way to die.

Finally, before it was too late to do so, Draden called upon one of the many innate gifts of his heritage and decreased his weight to almost nothing and just floated down the rest of the way until his feet touched the ground as softly as a feather. He looked around to be sure that his little stunt had gone unseen, and thankfully the self-absorbed cattle around him never even raised their heads to look in his direction. And not a one of them would find him out of place, for the enchantments woven into every stitch and strand of his coat kept his true shape from the prying eyes of those unworthy to gaze upon the beauty of he who was an Immortal. No human possessed such worth, and it pleased him in some way to deny these pigs what they didn't even know they were missing.

Parked just across the street from the Nightstone building was his mode of transportation. The motorcycle was a pleasing piece of machinery, one that he'd had a fine time modifying both mechanically and magically to suit his needs when he was in mortal guise. He straddled the mechanical steed and uttered a single phrase that kicked in the machine's ignition in place of a key to start it, then he was off to where he knew his Mistress would be on such a dreary night as this.

The wind rushing over him as he rode chilled him still, but the long fall from the very top of that great spire of a building had blow dried his clothes enough that the fabric was more cold than damp and that lessened the chill.

He arrived at his destination in more time than he hoped to spend getting this news to his Mistress, but the unpredictable traffic of New York was something he simply could not predict as it was too chaotic even for his Eye to divine. When he arrived he found himself faced with another choice, how to get in.

Draden was a lover of a good adrenaline rush, and would often challenge the intense obstacle course that was Dominique Destine's advanced security system, simply to prove to her that he could dodge her defenses unscathed. But he reminded himself that now was no time for fun and games, so he again chose the prudent path.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, searching the ether around the estate for the mind of his Lady. Demina never answered calls from the intercom after dark, so he knew she wouldn't know he was there. He felt around one room, then the other until he found her presence in the kitchen area and touched at her consciousness with his.

"_Mother,"_ he called into the woman's mind, _"I must speak wit-"_ his message was cut short as a stabbing pain shot through his left eye straight into his brain. He had a feeling that would happen, but had little choice in the matter right now.

Many minutes passed, he knew not how many, but breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the gates parted to grant him entry. He rode inside the gates and up the long way through the Destine estate compound until he was right at the door, then uttered the deactivation phrase and silenced his bike.

After putting down the kick stand on his bike and slipping his sunglasses back onto his face, the lights shining from the windows stinging his eyes telling him he would need them, Draden approached the large double doors and stepped over the threshold into the Destine estate. The first thing he felt was a sudden pain as the gargoyle waiting just inside the door swatted him upside the head with enough force to knock the sunglasses off his head and expose the dual sided glare of a bright blue right eye and a dead, diseased black orb on the left before the glare of a nearby lamp blinded the vampire.

"Stay out of my thoughts, Draden!" Demona spat at her minion as she walked around his front after closing and locking the front door. The blue skinned beauty bent over and picked up the shades, then studied them before handing them back to their owner. Miraculously the tinted glass lenses hadn't even scratched when they hit the hardwood floor. Draden pawed at the air for his glasses, eyes watering from the glare despite his hand clasped tightly in front of them. He felt the glasses being placed in his groping hand and breathed a sigh of relief, then another as he slid them carefully onto his face. The spell endowing the shades spread an invisible barrier around the devil's eyes, shutting out the light from all sides and converting it to a spectrum more suited to his vampire sight.

"Apologies, Mother, but I have urgent news and had to make myself known with as little incident as possible." Draden said sincerely, looking off to the coat rack by the door and asking, "May I?"

Demon's eyes rolled at the demon as if she didn't quite believe he had just reason for invading the deepest inner sanctuary of her mind just to announce himself. "You failed," she sneered, then shrugged to the question and went off on her way back to what she was doing before Draden disturbed her.

Taking the lack of a 'no' as permission, Draden slid off his long black coat and unceremoniously draped it over the wooden pole. As soon as the garment was removed he could feel its sway over his flesh melting away and the illusion failing. The left side of his face became covered in an elaborate tattoo of glyphs and runes originating from the diseased and seemingly useless eye beneath his shades and trickled down his neck all the way down, winding itself about the whole of his left arm where it ended in his palm with the symbol of the triquetra encircled by the winged ouroboros.

His hair streaked white, like an old human whose years were beginning to show, and from his naked back sprouted two great feathered wings that were as black as a raven's with a span longer than he was tall connected to each other at the spine. He let out a contented sigh and grinned to himself, his fangs poking out from beneath the upper lip only slightly. It felt good to be able to shed the façade, even if he was here for grave purposes, it still felt good to stretch.

After he was relaxed and able to stretch all of the tension from his muscles, Draden limped his wings and they fell down his back like a cloak with the longer pinion feathers only barely touching the floor. He followed Demona and found her sitting at the small kitchen table she used when the reclusive immortal didn't feel like eating in her large dining room with her wings cloaked over her shoulders and her back against the chair she was sitting in. On the table were several old parchments that Draden recognized by the soot letters without having to read the text.

This was an odd coincidence, he thought. What were the chances of his Mistress reminiscing about the past, and about _him_ in particular tonight of all nights?

"Well?" Demona's voiced pulled the younger immortal from his thoughts and reminded him that she was waiting, impatiently, to hear what he had to say.

"Mother, I am afraid we have a problem," he began, not even bothering to sit or even lean against something to make himself comfortable. "The White Rider has been revived, I saw her on the astral plane not more than an hour ago." Demona rose calmly from her seat, looking Draden dead in the eyes and walking slowly toward him.

"Mother, if I may," he went on "Now is not the time to be losing our heads about this as we have a bigger problem than-"

Again Draden's words were cut short, but this time by his body hurtling across the air and skidding on the kitchen floor after Demona slammed her fist into the fiend's chest.

"Who found the Heart?!" she hissed, grabbing Draden by the bases of his wings and yanking on them to pull him up. He cried out his pain and Demona only growled, eyes burning with rage. "You told me nobody would ever find it, so what happened!?"

"Mother, if I may…" Draden spoke in a shaky tone, trying to keep his composure despite the pain. He pulled himself away from Demona and leaned up against a counter while she continued to glare at him. Had it been anyone else Draden would have lunged with fangs bared and arm blazing for the attack, but he was more than understanding of Demona's rage about this. "Now is not the time for you to be angry with me for my failure as there is a much larger problem, one that indirectly concerns you." He paused for a moment to take in a few deep breaths before he told her. "She is in the city, I sensed it."

Demona's eyes ceased their burning glare and instead widened with what looked like fear. "Angela!" she said almost panicking, but she managed to stay calm enough to think logically about this despite her worry.

A number of problems arose from this news, the obvious danger to her beloved daughter being only one of those. Yet, something strange was tugging at her mind, something that she almost didn't notice in her panic, though she couldn't be sure what it was.

"If she's been summoned, the caster is no doubt dead." Draden said trying to offer what facts he thought would help in figuring out Demona's first course of action. "The Heart is needed to summon her, but to control a dragon one must speak its true name. And only you know her true name, Mother. There is no way anyone could know it, or comprehend it enough to use it."

"She'll have torn them to shreds and taken back the Heart as soon as the fool tried to control her." Demona said, thinking more calmly by the second. "Scry for her, find her." Demona said, glaring once again at her surrogate vampire son. "My daughter will not be harmed by her, or you will be as wingless as she is for your failure." The threat did not fall on deaf ears, as Draden flinched at the thought of being robbed of his wings.

"Find out who summoned her and why." Demona went on, "Our first priority is to get her back before she draws attention to herself and alerts Carina to her existence." She approached Draden again and got right up in his face, eyes blazing once again "I have enough headaches without that woman adding to them, now get to work." And with that she blew the words from her reading material, gathered them up and strolled away.

Draden slumped against the counter and slowly slid to the floor as soon as Demona was out of the room. His Mistress was not a cruel woman, but her wrath knew no limits and he knew that she would make good on her threat to maim him if Angela was harmed. Though he couldn't help noticing something strange about Demona's reaction to the news. Never had the gargoyle harbored any real hate for Zyon, despite how the dragon hated her, but the last thing he expected to see in his mother's eye was a twinge of excitement at the mention of her old enemy. Her worry and rage was so thick, that he wondered if she even noticed it.

He looked back to the table where the parchment rolls had been and wondered. Had old memories sparked something in the old gargoyle that made her react so strangely? Had nostalgia made her act in such a way? He just didn't know.

* * *

"How's that migraine treating ya, kiddo?"

Fox twitched slightly at the voice, but didn't reply to it. He sat, legs crossed and eyes closed in silent meditation. His breathing was soft, slow and controlled, but his mind was anything but calm. A million thoughts raced through his mind, and his heart throbbed painfully in his chest. He felt like he was being burned alive from the inside with nothing to still his pounding heart and throbbing head.

"He's been like that ever since he got changed into his Gi." Talon said from the other side of the dojo, standing with his wings cloaked over his shoulders like a sentry near one of the large windows looking out over the city. The mutant looked back at Puck hovering upside down in front of Fox's face and cringed, hating how the blasted imp could never be serious.

"Ohoho, what's this?" Puck suddenly appeared at Talon's side and stared the former human in the eyes. "What brought you out of hiding? Not getting enough use out of your wings underground?"

Talon scowled at the Fae trickster and growled low in his throat. He didn't have any idea how in the world Fox put up with Puck, because it was all he could do not to try and blast him to cinders. "Maggie wanted to visit Brooklyn and I didn't want her going alone, this city is still too unkind for me to trust her out there alone." He turned back to the wind then and looked back out at the city that had become so alien to him since his transformation all those years ago. "I haven't seen the Clan in too long, thought it was a good chance to get away from the hell of leadership and just see Maggie's smiling face again." He added with a hint of frustration in his tone.

Puck hovered in place beside Talon for a few moments before that impish grin of his appeared. This was too rare a chance to have a little fun with Talon, tease him with jibes about his relationship with Maggie and revel in his reaction. But the Fae was a playful sprite with a fondness for irony, not a cruel one who mocks allies. So he thought better of his idea and decided to phase back to Fox.

"Maggie picked a really bad time for it," Talon said with his back to the two Fae. "I don't know what's going on with you guys this time, but it doesn't sound like something I want us getting tangled up in. We've got enough problems to deal with."

Fox finally snapped once he could no longer keep calm. He let out a rasping breath that drew the attention of the musing Talon. The Fae and mutant looked on as Fox tried to stand, only to collapse on a bench beside the training mats.

"What's happening to me..?" Fox rasped, looking up at Puck whose playful demeanor had melted away some by Fox's plight. The trickster placed two fingers against Fox's forehead and covered the young halfbreed a soft glowing blue light. Fox's labored breathing became steadily easier as whatever spell Puck was casting had began dousing the fire blazing in his body.

"It's a reaction to Galizur's blood." Puck said, his feet suddenly touching the ground and his own body being wrapped in a soft light as he changed back into the shape of Owen Burnette. Talon wondered what this was about, but said nothing as he watched quietly.

"I think this warrants the excuse of a lesson." Owen said in his flat, even tone. His fingers pulled from Fox's forehead when he felt his younger charge was well enough to not need his magic to quell the pain.

Owen stepped off into the center of the dojo and waved a hand, conjuring an illusionary image of two figures. The first Fox recognized as the Fae lord Oberon, but the other, a statuesque bald man with clawed hands, a reptilian tail and a pair of great, white wings like that of an angel that spanned so impossibly far above their owner's head that they looked as though the illusion would go right through the high ceiling.

"Everything in this world has an opposite and an equal, that is the balance of nature to which all things that exist are bound. Even gods like my Lord Oberon came into existence with an opposite and equal whose power was the very bane of the Fae, and Oberon's the same to him. This opposite's name was Galizur, and he was the father of two great races not unlike the Fae." Owen dismissed the illusions and conjured up another, this one in the visage of a hulking, red-fleshed behemoth that looked as though he'd dwarf Goliath. Another form appeared beside it, this one eliciting a growl from Talon who was still watching the spectacle despite having expressed no desire to get involved. The shape was that of a young looking human, seeming no older than Fox himself, with shaggy black hair a dead, diseased black eye. Fox had never seen this person before, and he wondered how Talon recognized him.

Owen simply raised a hand as if to beg Talon's silence until his explanation was finished. "Unlike Lord Oberon," Owen continued, "Galizur's children were split into two very specific races, each one embodying a different aspect of the god himself." He walked up to the behemoth and raised a hand, suddenly animating the beast. It stood on two legs, but resembled little of the unusual woman who had caused Fox such pain earlier. The creature roared and hefted a great sword that no human could carry and swung it. Fox, despite knowing the illusion was just making Owen's point for him, ducked the swing of the imaginary blade. Then the beast froze and became as it had been before, just a visage.

"The unbridled power and hot blooded passion of a god with the heart of a mortal who savors every breath of life," Owen explained, gesturing to the titan. "was embodied in the form of that which we know as dragons, the great beasts worshipped by gargoyles of the ancient world and feared by humans."

He then gestured to the other figure, not choosing to animate this one for whatever reason it was he chose. "Vampires were the other race, before they degenerated into parasites." Owen's façade broke for a moment and Fox thought he saw a scowl forming on his teacher's stone face. "They embodied the magical aspect of the god, having great power that rivaled the Fae. It was Galizur's wish that he divide the power amongst his children, giving the Vampires great magical power and unbridled physical prowess to the Dragons. Though both races possessed both aspects of the god, neither could match the other in the aspect they did not excel. It simply was not in their blood."

Owen dismissed the illusions and turned back to Fox, who was now more calm and staring at Talon curiously. "Marcus said she was an abomination," Fox said indirectly to Owen, "but how could that be if both species that comprised her hailed from the same god?"

"Simple genetics." Owen said flatly. "The two races were meant to be opposites, just as they are the opposites of the Fae, so were they opposed to each other. Dragons were reptiles, Vampires more mammal than anything else."

He then went to sit down beside Fox and said to him. "That woman had such an effect on you because your Fae blood is weak and so you must train very hard to build up your defenses to her magical aura. Until then, stay far away from her. The next time this happens, it could kill you."

As if ignoring Owen's remark, Fox spoke to Talon. "Who was that man, I know you recognized him."

"Draden Velhart." Owen said, answering for the mutate. "Last Vampire left alive."

"Demona's pet assassin more like it," Talon growled, his eyes burning white with anger. Fox looked like he wanted to know more, but he didn't say a word.

All of this was so perplexing, Fox didn't even know where to begin processing it. Gods, dragons, vampires. It all made sense to the magical being inside him, but there was still so much he didn't understand. How was Zyon born, who was she, what did this Draden who shared her family name have to do with her and Demona in turn?

He was still trying to figure out all of it, and was about to ask Owen more questions when an alarm blasted through the Eery.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4 – Twisted Games**

Zyon pawed over the clothes the humans had provided for her and examined the choices critically. None of them looked terribly comfortable, but that was because the clothes were made for humans and she was not one…not anymore.

A few of what had been provided for her looked like they'd be acceptable, if she didn't think the clothes would be unbearably tight on her. She hated to wear tight clothing, even if it was a snug pair of slacks or a top with a tight neck. She didn't like the idea at all, it reminded her too much of being in bondage and helpless. The thought made her quiver and she felt sick to her stomach as she looked at her shackled wrists, the silver bracelets feeling like they weighed a hundred pounds.

Still, she thought as she looked herself over in the mirror by her bed, it would be better than walking around in clothes with holes in them that showed off parts of her body she wasn't thrilled to exhibit to strangers. The last thing she wanted was to show off her goods for her hosts and whatever else inhabited in this castle.

"Dawn cannot come soon enough." The dragon muttered to her reflection, then flung herself onto her bed and heaved a heavy sigh.

Despite her disquieting thoughts, Zyon's mood was a stark contrast to the one she'd been in only a few hours ago. She was once again thankful for her mother teaching her what she did when she was still alive, for her trips into the astral plane were a welcome respite from reality. Her sanctuary in the stars, a place where she was at peace for just a little while; it amazed the immortal that she hadn't forgotten how to astral project after so many centuries of being unable to do so-it amazed her that a lot of things hadn't happened-and that she was still able to find her way back without any hindrance.

Though with her new calm came a new set of thoughts to ruin it. Now that she'd managed to put her emotions in check, and was again thinking with a level head, she could brood on what's happened to her from a logical standpoint.

Zyon rolled off her bed and began pacing the room in front of the bed, walking back and forth between the bathroom door and a window on the opposite end of the room. She had a lot to consider.

The Illuminati popped into her mind first, and she started to really consider what she'd found so wrong with what had happened this night.

In the back of her mind she knew that she was honor bound to at least hear the humans out before she declined whatever task they demanded of her, for one of their sorcerers had freed her from the prison Carina had locked her away in. Such an act warranted some cooperation from her, even if she was distrustful of humans in general. But there was a problem.

Carina, her tormentor and jailor, had been high on the ladder of power within the Vatican-higher than the priests would ever admit a woman could climb-so her magical secrets, especially notes on how Zyon had been sealed away in that thick pool of rancid, stinking blood would have been heavily protected from the prying eyes of the like of Illuminati spies. While the idea of Illuminati infiltrating the church was hardly a stretch, she was going off the assumption that Carina even had written her spells down. To Zyon, who thought she knew her tormentor best, it seemed so strange that she'd take notes of any kind. Carina's memory had always been excellent, and she loathed divulging even the most basic of her secrets in any way just as any sorcerer who horde their secrets. It just did not make sense for the enchantress to leave records behind. So how had the Illuminati figured out how to break her bindings?

And what of you, old friend? Zyon silently wondered, fingering the black diamond pendant dangling about her neck while she pondered what had become of it in the years since Carina tore it from her neck. Even now she could feel it pulsing, throbbing with the desire to feed and be rejuvenated. Again she told herself that the dawn could not come soon enough.

The Heart of Ny'Dhun, her most precious life source. Zyon was overjoyed to have it back around her neck, beating soft resonance like she imagined her heart would if she could still remember what a heartbeat felt like.

Zyon loved the little black gem, loved it like her beloved brother, Darius and hated it like she hated the vile Desmina who adorned her with the jewel almost seven-hundred years ago. The trinket was a double edged sword, and one edge would cut into her every day until the end of time. Assuming such a day would ever come.

It was a popular belief among the humans who hated her, or the ignorant in general, that her mixed blood accorded her great power that rivaled both the species from which she was born. This simply was not true, and in fact could not be farther from truth. She was a mutation, and was lucky to have lived as long as she did when she was still mortal.

She again regarded her immature wings, reaching back with one hand to finger one of the bony tips. All she'd needed was a few mere decades more of mortality, and she would have grown fully into her body and purge the vampire blood. But her father's blood refused to be replaced, and the two halves of her body constantly warred with each other for dominance over Zyon's form.

She realized that she never would have lived to see her evolution complete, for on that night so long ago she had been on the brink of death.

By that time, she and Darius were the last of her mother's kind. Carina's Exorcist Army had ravaged her homeland and scattered her people to the far corners of the continents, hunting them down one by one and parading their heads around like war trophies.

Her people…yes, all of them were hunted like animals. Dragon and vampire alike were slain at the hands of the humans, made powerless by Carina's unusual power that struck them all immobile and at their killer's mercy. Zyon had little love for the vampires, but pitied them still for such a despicable death. Even Zyon's enemies deserved better than how her kind had been wiped out.

That night she and Darius had taken refuge within an abandoned castle. He'd told her that the locals feared the place was haunted by ghosts, so it was a good enough place as any to hide. He'd been right about one thing, for she'd sensed spirits swirling all about the place from the moment she stepped within the courtyard and stared up at the great stone gargoyles standing guard over the city along with their shattered compatriots.

It sent chills down Zyon's spine to look upon them, and somehow she knew that they were not mere statues. A strong sense of mourning filled the air around the castle, probably the same sensation that frightened away so many humans who might have taken refuge here, and somehow in Zyon's heart she knew humans had wrought whatever tragedy had occurred there.

It was when she'd taken up a shard of what had once been a beautiful female's face that the pain struck her. Her body burned with a terrible heat, as though her very blood had begun to boil and pain wracked every limb from head to tail tip. Her body had once more begun warring with itself, ripping her asunder as the two halves of her competed for dominance in a battle neither would win. She reeled backward, too encompassed with her agony to heed the ledge until she'd backed up too far and found herself falling from the high tier.

She cried for her brother, begging his aid through tortured screams of pain as she fell but he never came. Darius had gone missing shortly after Zyon went to investigate the castle, and did not answer her calls even when her body landed with a crash on what had once been a stable.

She laid there, heart impaled on a jagged shard of broken wood. Her hot blood began to pool around her, wafting heat all around her. Her body had ceased its conflict once she had been hurt, but it was far too late. Her heart had been pierced, and her many calls for help from Darius came out as naught but sickening gurgles of bubbling blood. Darius hadn't come to save her, and could no longer call for him. Despair welled within her and she began to sob, coughing up blood and crying scarlet tears as her lifeblood began to seep out everywhere; even her ears bled. She was going to die, and what was worse was that she was going to die alone. Darius never answered her calls, and she would never know of his fate.

She bled out for nearly an hour in that decrepit stable, hanging on only by her inhuman resilience.

Had I been evolved, she thought to herself at that moment, if only I was complete, I would live.

But she was not fully evolved, caught between the warring blood within her and still suffered many of the original mortal weaknesses that she, like all dragons and vampires, suffered from birth until their evolutions were complete and they took their place as gods.

As she lay there, slowly and painfully dying as a heavy rain began to beat down on her and dilute the pool of blood her tears ceased and the despair she felt was slowly replaced by a great, fiery rage and hatred for Carina and every human who'd scourge the great races of the benevolent Galizur, the god who served men.

Betrayers! She cried out in her mind. Foul betrayers! The God graced their kind and offered them great power, honored them and revered them for their mortality. He'd given them so much that that putrid Oberon never had and they repaid him by slaughtering his children and driving him mad with grief. They had to pay! She wanted to make them pay, and with much of her remaining strength she gargled out a bloody curse to each and every human who had harmed her kin. She would repay blood with blood and take back all that those disgusting humans had taken from her.

And that was when She came.

A young boy's voice called out, "Mother, I have found her!" and Zyon weakly tried to turn her head to see who had spoken. She saw a child, radiating a magical aura that betrayed his human face. A vampire. Probably one of the last of her father's kind. But who had he called to? Mother? Another survivor?

No, it wasn't another vampire. She'd never seen the like of her before, but knew from the statues scattered throughout the castle, whole and shattered alike, she knew that it was a gargoyle. She was beautiful, Zyon thought, with lovely blue flesh and hair as red as blood. Her wings made Zyon's pierced heart ache even more, envy seeping in with her violent rage as she looked upon this vision of winged beauty before her.

She pushed the boy aside and rushed in, kneeling in the watered down blood pool. The creature cradled Zyon's head gently, hissing out some curse she couldn't understand, for her ears were beginning to fail her. She was almost dead, but at that moment she didn't seem to care. The quiet was so peaceful, and she felt what was left of her pain melting away into that calm, beautiful silence.

Perhaps this is for the best, she thought as her eyes too began to fail her and the muffled words of the female gargoyle faded completely. She was ready to succumb, to let death take her away into that deep, perpetual quiet and she would have if she had not managed to hear those last muffled words.

"Do…live…revenge…" the voice said, now so muffled that she couldn't even tell which of the two were talking, but she knew the intent of those words and what the creature was offering her. She opened her eyes, locking her fuzzy sight onto the blue, amorphous form of the gargoyle and gurgled out something that not even she could comprehend at the time. But the gargoyle had taken whatever she'd said as consent, allowing the woman to do what she would in exchange for revenge. Zyon wanted to die that night, wanted the silence to envelope her and take her away to where the humans could never hurt her again. But she wanted vengeance more, wanted to kill the humans for what they'd done to the people she'd loved most. And it was be that lust for revenge that would damn her.

"Damn you, Desmina!" Zyon cried, punching the wall near the window only to draw it back and hiss in pain as she struck a stud in the wall. The sudden pain was welcome, though, for it brought her back from her madness. The memory of her damnation to this moment in time always elicited great rage in her. It wasn't until the pain had snapped her back to reality that she realized the bedroom and part of the main room beyond were filled with a bright blue inferno. She could not feel it, but Zyon knew she'd just dropped the temperature in the room substantially by allowing her aura emanation to get out of control once again.

Zyon breathed a heavy sigh and slumped against the wall, dismissed the blaze with a gesture and began taking in soft, controlled breaths to try and calm herself. It was working until Zyon realized where she was leaning. She turned and backed away from the window quickly.

If there was one emotion she did not miss when her rages took over, it was fear. She remembered then the helicopter ride to the castle she'd been too enraged to be afraid of and began to quiver. Ever since that long ago day she'd had a terrible fear of falling from great heights. She started to cry as the terrifying images of the city from so high above filled her mind and the room began to fill with blue mist, but it went no further than that.

"Control yourself." Zyon breathed, trying to calm herself. "Be not fearful, but brave as Mother taught."

Thankfully, that was enough to calm her and clear the room. There was little she could do about her emotions most of the time, but at least when the sun came and her Heart had a chance to feed she'd be able to control these awful manifestations a little better. They were a terrible defect of her blood, and she hated them. She couldn't even count how many times they'd gotten her in trouble.

Once her mind cleared and she was once again calm, Zyon felt another thought pop into her head that hadn't registered to her at the time.

"It could not be…" Zyon muttered as the memory of the castle's exterior came flooding back to her. "No, it could not be!"

Zyon jumped to her feet and headed for the door, pausing briefly when she realized that she was still almost completely exposed in the ragged excuse for clothing she still wore. She looked back to the pile of clothes the human Owen had provided for her and pulled out two pieces that would just have to do.

She pulled on a pair of black sweat pants that, while not being uncomfortably tight, clung to her legs and a wispy piece of white cotton that she took as some kind of shirt. Zyon had ripped off her torn slacks, but chose to wear the remains of her tunic under this pathetic excuse for clothing. She knew that it would do even less good if she managed to get wet, even though she could tell the rain has stopped by looking out the window, so whatever additional protection she had from prying eyes would be welcome. The other tops provided were of a thicker material, but did not seem built for a creature of Zyon's physique and species and looked as though they'd be far too tight for her to wear without having a panic attack. Zyon jerked on the front of the shirt, pulling the back against her undeveloped wingtips and tearing holes to accommodate them, then she went to the drawer Owen had indicated earlier and fished out the unusual rectangular talisman that he said would open the door to her quarters, which she had been told would lock by itself when she left. Zyon went back into the sleeping room of her quarters and regarded herself in the mirror once before heading out. Her ensemble was hardly the most stylish thing the hybrid had ever worn, but it was better than nothing.

Zyon exited her quarters and began walking down the hall in the opposite direction she'd come from the elevator, hoping to find stares that would lead her outside where she could get a better view of the place.

She walked quickly, sneering at those damnable devices in the walls that followed her even now. She turned corners, took stares going down where she could find them and followed the view of the castle grounds from the windows until she found herself outside. She took a look around and realized she was not far from where the helicopter had landed in the courtyard of the castle; she could even see the thing a ways away from her position.

Zyon backed away, back inside the archway she'd just come out of and shivered at the memory of the ride to the castle. She shook it off quickly, then strode out into the open and surveyed the castle.

There was no mistaking it from this angle, looking up at the structures, towers and guard walls. The defensive outer wall had been stripped away, but there was no mistaking this architecture. Somehow, by some twist of fate Zyon was now looking upon a sight she'd not seen in over seven-hundred years. Shakily, the dragon woman turned her eyes to the top tier where she had fallen. She swallowed hard and clenched her fists tightly, for it was all she could do to steady herself. She realized then that the gargoyles who the human David had been talking to must have been the ones she saw encased in stone all those years ago, or their descendants more likely. But how?

Zyon backed away again, hiding under the doorway she'd come out from when she heard voices coming from another end of the courtyard as a door opened and two figures came out. Zyon only caught a brief glimpse of them before retreating, but they were definitely gargoyles. Zyon backed away further, closing the door she'd used but not shutting it completely. She wanted to discern who these individuals were before considering showing herself.

"Angela didn't take that very well at all." one dejected male voice said.

"I hadn't expected her to," another, stern male voice replied, "She is a good girl and a fine warrior, but far too naïve to see the big picture when her mother is involved."

"I still don't see why she still defends Demona after all that bitch did," the first voice spat, "Elisa and Hudson, Angela knows it was her fault just like the rest of us and yet she still defends her. If you ask me, I say Xanatos' messing with magic did a bit of good for once if it means us being rid of Demona once and for all."

"Demona…" Zyon breathed, the name striking a familiar chord in her brain. It couldn't be the same one, she thought, but how common a name could that be amongst gargoyles, which were a race that did not normally name each other?

"Hudson fell in battle, like every warrior should." the first voice said sternly, as if defending the accused. A brief silence followed and the stern male voice breathed a heavy sigh before continuing. "We've no proof Demona had anything to do with Elisa's accident. Though I will shed no tears for Demona's death, it was Draden who pulled the trigger and it is he who will answer for it." The voice turned into a low, angry growl near the end as it seemed to anger the composed male simply to say them.

The conversation continued after that with the two males going back and forth about the night's events and the person they both seemed to hate, and possibly information that would have given Zyon insight on why she'd been freed by the Illuminati who appeared to be on good terms with these gargoyles if she'd been coherent enough to continue her eavesdropping.

Zyon backed away from the door quickly, turned and began walking quickly back the way she'd come. She didn't know where she was going, where she wanted to go or even if she wanted to be in this damnable castle another moment.

"Lies!" Zyon spat, slamming her fists down on the first thing she could as soon as her legs stopped carrying her away. She'd found herself in what appeared to be the kitchen Owen had mentioned a couple hours before, though in her mental haze she didn't remember how she'd gotten there and at that moment she couldn't have cared.

"What game is this," Zyon sneered, slamming her fists on a counter, "what sick jest is this!?"

The dragon raged, pounding her fists and lashing her tail back and forth like a whip cutting through the air. Her violet eyes burned amber flame and her chest heaved with heavy, labored breaths. Her body was engulfed in light similar to her own purple eyes. Small, smoke like tendrils of violet light reached out from her body on all sides as if trying to grab at something they couldn't find.

Zyon was outraged, her still heart ached and her eyes began to well with tears. She didn't know what to believe, who to believe. She knew the human hadn't lied to her about how much time had passed, for she could feel in the very air that centuries had passed. The advances in human civilization she'd seen were further proof, for when she left the mortals last they were in a rut brought about by the nobility and their fear of losing power if they allowed the lesser folk to become too intelligent. That rut had shown know sign of breaking, and Zyon was sure it would have to have been centuries before it did. There was little doubt in her mind that she had been trapped in her nightmare for so long, no doubt at all. But to think that She still lived, it simply could not be!

Desmina was a strong creature, and Zyon had seen the gargoyle fell humans that she herself would have stood little chance against all alone. She had never seen the gargoyle bleed, never seen her sick or hurt. Not even Zyon, who was a fine match for the gargoyle, had ever caused her harm. She had little trouble believing that nobody could kill Desmina, but despite that there was still no way she could still live. No gargoyle could live that long.

Zyon's confusion only deepened as she tried to put the pieces together. Demona was not a common name for any race and, as far as Zyon knew, She was the only one who'd ever been known by such a name. But it was the other name which made it all the more confusing. Draden could have been the most common name on the planet, but when coupled with that name…

"Is this some trick?" Zyon growled, her mind suddenly flooding with suspicion. It seemed to make sense, for how else could the Illuminati know how to break Carina's spell? This had to be some twisted game, a farce orchestrated by that damn woman to further torment the immortal. It would suit Carina's love of irony to imprison Zyon for centuries only to awaken her into an alien world and crush her hopes for vengeance and death, and then raise them up again. Well she wasn't going to get her satisfaction from the dragon this time, and never again!

"Never again!" Zyon cried aloud just as her rage reached its apex and she released all her rage in a great, booming roar that shook the cookwear hanging about the kitchen. The tendrils of violet light drew back and coiled about her form like so many strangling serpents and melded together into a flame like aura and slowly dissipated as Zyon began to slowly calm herself. She felt good getting that out, and she felt the calm starting to come back to her as the air in her lungs emptied and her cry faded into silence. Perhaps when she was once again in her right mind she could decide on a course of action to take. She certainly couldn't stay amongst these humans and their gargoyle conspirators.

Zyon turned from the counter she'd been gripping, ignoring claw marks she'd made on her host's property at some point during her rage and was about to head back to her quarters to think when her eyes fell upon a figure standing a mere few feet away. It was a gargoyle, and this one was female. Possibly she was the female voice Zyon had heard earlier that night. She stood only a few feet from her, one lovely wing draped over an arm clutching something to her breast. She was a beautiful specimen, and somehow she was familiar. Zyon stepped back from the female, as if offering peace to the blue-skinned creature to placate the look of uneasiness that was plane on her face.

The gesture did little to calm the gargoyle's nervousness, though she did step forward and continue her business. Zyon watched as the girl rummaged through the cabinets with her free hand, the other still clutching to her chest whatever it was her wing was concealing.

"Are you okay?" the gargoyle asked Zyon, casting a sideways glance at the dragon in between glances at the contents of the cabinet she was rummaging through.

"Fine," Zyon said under her breath, not expecting the gargoyle to hear but also not surprised when the female looked back at her in response. "My emotions get the better of me at times, is all." Zyon averted her gaze away from the lovely female, making a conscious effort not to look her in the eyes out of shame for the fact that this creature had probably been watching her outburst from the start. She wondered to herself if this gargoyle too was one of Carina's conspirators, appearing there out of convenient coincidence in order to spin more lies.

She wasn't sure what to think. Something in the way the female was acting told Zyon that her presence in the kitchen at that time was bad timing for the gargoyle, because the uneasy look on her face that Zyon studied from the corner of her eye wasn't going away. It was as if the gargoyle had been trying to avoid her and had run into a spot of bad luck in that endeavor.

Silence filled the room for many minutes as the gargoyle pushed aside cans and bottles, breaking the quiet only to mutter a small frustrated curse to someone by the name of Broadway for misplacing whatever it was she was searching for. She finally grinned triumphantly when she found her target, a strange looking bottle with what appeared to be a rubber nipple on its cap. Zyon studied the thing for a brief moment before deciding that it must be a more sophisticated form of baby feeding devices she had seen human use throughout her travels of the human world.

Then she must be feeding her baby, the dragon decided as she looked at the gargoyle's covered side. She noticed very little movement from beneath the caped wing aside from the female's own movements, and Zyon imagined the child must have been asleep.

"It is good to see your kind flourishing." Zyon said, assuming the child under the gargoyle's wing was a gargoyle baby. She still did not look the female in the eyes.

The blue beauty stopped scooping into the bottle some powder from a can she had also pulled down and just looked under her wing at what she was holding for a few minutes before turning her eyes to Zyon and asking, "Do you know why you are here?" in a bitter tone that made Zyon's eyes narrow.

She finally lifted her eyes and locked glares with the gargoyle who was staring at her with bitterness in her eyes. Zyon's scowl softened into a look of shock once she'd gotten a good look at the female's face for the first time. Suddenly she realized what had been so familiar about the gargoyle and her slowly growing calm shattered. Her eyes burned with amber rage and she lunged at the female.

"Who are you!?" Zyon hissed like a serpent, pinning the gargoyle against the counter and digging her claws into the creature's shoulders.

The gargoyle let out a cry of pain, followed by another cry from beneath her wing. Zyon looked down and saw stirring from underneath the female gargoyle's wing and the loud, shrill roars of an infant beneath it. Her eyes ceased to burn and she was quickly overcome by the fear of what she'd just done.

The gargoyle took the opening and shoved Zyon back with her free hand, then raised a foot and slashed at the dragon with razor sharp talons. Zyon stumbled back many feet before crumpling to the floor and clenching her stomach in pain. The garoyle's aim had been good enough to cut at the un-evolved dragon on the stomach where her draconic hide hadn't covered her yet. She felt the hot wetness of blood covering her arms and knelt forward on her knees in pain.

She cast her eyes up at the gargoyle and saw her, eyes burning red and her free hand outstretched defensively while she clutched the child closer to her breast.

"Gods…what have I done..?" Zyon rasped, her strength starting to fade away as she bled out onto the floor. She knew she would not die from this, but she also knew that she could not heal herself until the dawn. She was weak, and every outburst of anger sapped her stamina more and more which left her very little to resist the growing fatigue as her excessive bleeding made her weary. But she didn't care about that at the moment.

Her blurry eyes focused on the gargoyle and her screaming child and she felt wet warmth flowing from her eyes as the image flashed in her mind of another mother who had defended her child against the dragon centuries before.

"Forgive me…" Zyon rasped out before falling flat in the gathered pool of blood. She heard a siren blast through the room and numerous voices crying out in confusion, followed by foot steps and more shouts. She felt hands lift her up and slam her against the nearest wall. Zyon grunted weakly at the painful crunch of one of her wingtips chipping against the hard wall.

"What have you done to my daughter!?" a hysterical male voice snapped at Zyon. She recognized the voice as one she'd heard before outside of the castle. Zyon lifted her head weakly and looked past the enraged gargoyle, her fuzzy eyes focusing once again looking to the female gargoyle who was now being held by another gargoyle who she assumed was her mate by the way he held her.

The male continued to bark at her, yelling for answers but Zyon's hearing had failed her already and as her body grew too weak to stay conscious Zyon slurred out on final apology.

"I…am…sorry…" she slurred out as her vision went dark.


End file.
